Ravindra P Nettimi

I was not as excited about insects in my school days. During my undergraduate years, I volunteered to join a project with Dr. Ramana Athreya (IISER Pune, India) in the rain forests of Arunachal Pradesh (India). This motivated me to appreciate the diversity and function in nature. I remember getting excited at the sight of an animal/plant that I had never seen before. Ants were the most common ones. So, I naturally had an inclication towards ants. I started observing them on our institute campus, and read a few interesting studies about them. During this process, I wanted to find answers to some questions. Thus, my explorations began: I studied navigation, ant-insect mutualism and natural history of ants that are found around the campus. Some of them were later published as research articles.

For my Master’s thesis, I worked in the lab of Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar (IISc, Bangalore), where I studied mate and nest mate recognition in a tropical wasp. This helped broaden my interests in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour, and motivated me to pursue research. For my PhD, I am investigating the effects of miniaturisation in ants on their visual navigation.

Over the course of my PhD, I have been involved in various science communication and outreach activities–like making podcasts and teaching research to school students. Please visit my blog and website for more information.

Aniruddha Mitra, Ravindra Palavalli Nettimi, Arathy Ramachandran, Paromita Saha and Raghavendra Gadagkar. 2015. Males and females of the social wasp Ropalidia marginata do not differ in their cuticular hydrocarbon profiles and do not seem to use any long distance volatile mate attraction cues. Insectes Sociaux. 62: 281-289.